


Not Okay

by Mohini



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: AU - not anything compliant, Dissociation, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Steve Rogers Has PTSD, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-06-01
Packaged: 2019-05-17 01:01:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14822262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mohini/pseuds/Mohini
Summary: Pretty Hate Machine is blaring from Natasha’s phone as she sinks into a sofa in the Avengers’ common area. This is guaranteed to mean nothing good. It probably means several thousand not good things. All of those things will be infinitely worse if she doesn’t answer the thing, though, so she hits the suddenly ominous green circle on the screen and holds it to her ear. An eerily calm, gravel soaked voice responds to her automatic opening of “Romanoff.”“Did you misplace a national icon, Romanoff?”





	Not Okay

Pretty Hate Machine is blaring from Natasha’s phone as she sinks into a sofa in the Avengers’ common area. This is guaranteed to mean nothing good. It probably means several thousand not good things. All of those things will be infinitely worse if she doesn’t answer the thing, though, so she hits the suddenly ominous green circle on the screen and holds it to her ear. An eerily calm, gravel soaked voice responds to her automatic opening of “Romanoff.”

“Did you misplace a national icon, Romanoff?”

“Beg your pardon?”

“National icon. Blonde hair? Lots of muscles. Currently falling the fuck apart on my kitchen floor???”

“I’m sorry, what?!?” she responds, and she’s on her feet, forget how exhausted she is after a full week of active mission. No one even told her that Rogers was back from his own op. That was going to make things really exciting for the guys in TOC when she got to them, but for now, she had an angry murder robot on the line and that really, really needed to be tended to first. 

“Falling apart, Romanoff. On my floor. Shhhh, Stevie, shhh, I’ve got you. Shellshock like hell, puking, shaking, I want to know what happened and I want to know now. Stevie, shhhh, shhhh, breathe for me. Just get over here. Now.”

Natasha is behind the wheel of the first fast thing she spots in the garage in minutes and heading for the place in Red Hook that Barnes calls home and Steve refuses to acknowledge to any of the rest of the team is where he sleeps whenever possible. 

She calls Tony on the way, and gets nothing of use out of him, just that Rogers returned, was logged physically sound, and took off. Apparently no one saw fit to see if he was remotely safe emotionally. She calls Barnes again when she’s outside the building. God only knows what he’s got the door rigged with and she’s not risking trying to let herself in. He directs her to an upstairs window, which she has to access by way of a grappling hook climb but he opens it for her and nothing explodes so she’ll take it. True to his word, there is indeed one Captain America on the kitchen floor, back against a corner, knees to his chest, and arms wrapped tight around his calves. His eyes are completely shock blown and he’s shaking hard. She moves on autopilot towards him and doesn’t even think to gauge risk when a kick lashes out and brings her off her feet and crashing to the tile. When she looks up, Steve is in a different corner, same position. She looks over at Barnes. 

“Yeah, there’s that, too. Whatever happened, he’s not doing so hot.”

“Understatement of the century, Soldier,” she mutters. 

“Stevie, sweetheart, stand down. I’m coming closer and I need you to be still,” Barnes growls in a voice that has probably brought people to their knees. Steve seems to find it comforting and he looks up, nods, and resumes rocking on the floor. This is so many kinds of not good Natasha lost count a while ago. How did she not realize Cap has wicked unholy PTSD???

There’s a blur of motion and she realizes that Steve tried that same kick with Barnes, despite his apparent understanding of the order a moment earlier. Barnes has him pinned now, legs around his waist and a metal arm across his chest, holding him tight against his own body. 

“Steven Grant Rogers. Stand. Down. Now.” Barnes snarls. 

Any sane person would have promptly shit their pants and passed out at that tone. Steve just fights harder. 

“Romanoff, there are tranqs taped to the underside of the cabinet above the microwave. It will take both. Get them in him. Please,” Barnes requests. 

She doesn’t have the mental energy to think about what it means that they have tranquilizers on hand that might have even a small effect on Rogers. Instead, she grabs the two syrettes, and moves toward the two men on the floor. She kneels, jabbing first one and then the other into the flesh of his neck. In seconds, he drops like a limp puppet. 

Barnes is on his feet immediately, hoisting the unconscious mass of muscle and blonde hair over his shoulder and hauling him through the apartment into the bedroom. Natasha trails behind, trying not to consider how utterly wrong this is. Right about then, her phone chirps. Tony. 

“Please tell me you have something,” she says instead of a greeting. 

“I love you too. Put me on speaker. Cyborg needs to hear this too.”

She switches the phone mode and tells him as much.

“Rogers presented in medical with some wounds. Bullet grazes and such. One of the newish docs thought it would be a good idea to give him a sedative hypnotic to try to keep him comfortable while they heal. According to the record they used a compound similar to GHB.”

“They roofied Captain America?” Natasha asks, certain her ears are malfunctioning.

“Looks like. Say, he doesn’t happen to be hurling like it’s his job, does he? Because damn but that shit always makes me lose my lunch.”

“Four times and counting,” Barnes reports. “What’s the processing time on this shit?”

“Bruce thinks somewhere in the six hour range given rate of metabolism.”

“Do me a favor and ghost the doc off to some untraceable location before that time is up? I swore off killing for revenge and I’m feeling very tempted right now,” Barnes replies. 

“Too late. Wanda decided to take care of it. I’d be surprised if the guy can still string together a sentence without serious guidance. That girl has a serious temper, did you know?”

“Then give her my thanks. And Tony? Have Bruce brew up another batch of my tranqs.”

“The fuck?”

“How do you think I sedated him? It takes two of mine to get him down and they won’t last long, but he was going to hurt himself. Just tell Bruce I need a new batch.”

“Terminator, sweetheart, how did you go through a ten dose batch in a month?”

“S’been a hell of a month, Stark. And did you miss that it takes two to get him down? Do the fucking math and figure out how I know that. New batch. Hopefully before I use up the last two doses in the apartment. That too much to ask?”

“I’ll have someone bring it later. We’ll do a double, and we can discuss this later.”

The call disconnects, and Natasha is left staring at Barnes. The man looks back at her, eyes dark but calm. 

“How long has he been hurting without anyone noticing?” Barnes asks her quietly. 

It takes less time than she would like to admit to know the answer. Longer to give it voice.

“From the moment he woke up in New York,” she replies. “He’s good, really good at keeping the costume on and the image pristine. But there’s something ugly under it and he won’t let anyone see it, much less actually do anything about it.”

“S’always been like that,” Barnes murmured, flesh hand stroking through Steve’s hair in a gesture that looked far too intimate for Natasha to be allowed to witness. 

A soft moan from Steve’s lips brought both of them to rigid attention, and Steve was flipped to his side seconds before his body tensed and heaved up a torrent of stomach acid over the edge of the bed onto the rug. 

Natasha ran for the bathroom to grab a bin, all but throwing it at Barnes before she rolled up the rug and hauled it to the bathtub to clean it before the stench set. She suspected she now understood why Barnes insisted on the old fashioned and handily washable rag rugs. When she returned to the bedroom, she was directed to the closet and a stack of nearly identical rugs on a shelf. She wasn’t sure she really wanted to contemplate that one very hard as she spread it out on the floor. 

“Shhh, Stevie, shhhh,” Barnes was repeating yet again, hand rubbing circles on Steve’s back as the other man’s breathing slowed gradually into something compatible with actually taking in oxygen. Frightened blue eyes were locked on Barnes and the pupils were utterly blown, the rohypnol clearly still in full effect despite the sedative having been burned easily from his system. 

Natasha crouched at the foot of the bed, attempting to keep herself as small and nonthreatening as possible as Barnes recited time, date, place, and what was happening in an endless loop. It wasn’t that Natasha was unfamiliar with grounding techniques, but it was utterly bizarre to hear the Winter Soldier calmly going through it with a shaking, panting Steve in his arms. 

“Tell me what you see,” Barnes commanded after Steve’s breathing finally slowed. 

“Tasha, you, home,” Steve replied. 

“Tell me what you smell,” came the second command.

“Tide. Bedsheets are fresh, can smell the detergent, yeah, um, Tide.”

“Good job, Stevie. You’re doing fine. Tell me what you’re hearing.”

“Clock, cars outside, the kid downstairs is watching TV, cartoons I think, motorcycle just went by,” Steve replied dutifully.

“That’s my Stevie. Do you know what happened?”

“Doc gave me something. Made, makes, damn, feel awful, Bucky, gonna be sick,” Steve trailed off and Tasha grabbed the bin and held it beneath his chin as he retched for what felt like an eternity to all of them. 

By the time it tapered back down, Steve was gasping for breath and it was pretty obvious that without Bucky holding onto him he would have collapsed long before. Barnes kept running a hand through Steve’s hair and wiped the traces of sick sweat from the other man’s face with the edge of his shirt. 

“I’ve got you,” he whispered. “I know it’s not okay, but I’ve got you.”


End file.
